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Hmm, well I couldn't describe my topic in any other way at all. I haven't been working for daz for too long but from the looks at the store all I ever see is assets for either young people (early to mid 20s and at best young adults at mid 30s at best). All I can see here and there is just young looking models, clothes that are too fashionable and again mostly for young people. Hair that is too fancy and for young people.
I am sure there's plethora of content for daz but nothing seems to catch my mind. There's just never something that's giving the actual real profile of a person living in reality. And even if there's something it's usually for young characters again. What I was looking for was for a mid 30s to early 40s character. Suburban lady. Sophisticated and living a normal life as far her character goes. Likes to keep her appearance well and maintained but not in the fashionable sense. I couldn't find models that matched that criteria, and the same goes for other assets, ranging from hair to clothes which is the most primordial list of things you need to complete a character. Pardon me for saying but I need a little help in looking for these stuff.
Right now I am looking for her hair. I found this set Back Updo from OOT. It was all fine and good, but something I never liked about in her hair first and foremost was that, on the outside, it does appear to have a lot of varieties. But when you actually look at the set you'll find the only variety there is, is with the least amount of things that one would call much of a change. With the bangs. With the buns at most in one or two of her packs. But you can't do much to the base that sets up the whole style. No matter how many variations you give to the bangs or anything else, as long as you can't do much with the base how much of a difference or variation does it even really make then? Just my opinion. I would have gone with that set because that's one set where I had a little bit of more leeway, more than in any other set I have seen. But the base, that gives it off quite a more fancier look which I was trying to avoid. I would have preferred it sleeker and straight instead of giving a little puffier look on the sides on the farthest back of her head. I would love to hear other's opinion whether what I said is actually how it is or am I just mistaken due to my inexperience.
There is relevant stuff out there, it is just a matter of being vigilant & patient.
Neftis {Daz & 'Rosity) does some very nice hair styles.
Remember you can use hairs from earlier generations too, if you adjust the surface settings with more modern shaders.🙂
@littlepleasures You've said it, and I couldn't have worded it any better at all. This is just the reality of it and even though there might still be some tools that could ease end consumers experience a lot only if daz wasn't feeble minded into keeping their "proprietary" tech to themselves it could have been a lot better. True, I want to support the developers whenever I can but whenever I see the limitations that I am poised against, I just don't feel the will in me. That feeling to support the developers just goes away. And yeah, their laziness and tricks also plays into motion. I wasn't aware that most sets of hair are useless in laying pose or any other directional pose aside from just standing. That's something new to me but I really am not surprised.
It's just as you have said about working on standard casual day-to-day general scenes. It's not that easily possible. And I am totally inexperienced with Daz. I am still learning but even those tools provide little help sometimes. Especially when it's hair. How did you manage to select the full strands to use with the mesh grabber? I can't ever. It ends up distorting some other part of the hair or the other, and even with it the number of possibilities does not really increase exponentially, I tried to use it. And aside from a singular motion in multi-direction. As from my experience at least with it. Even it's addon didn't impress me much. About geometry editor, I use it to hide the surfaces. But again, if I had to do some manual editing I could never select the polygons I wanted to hide or not. Because it wouldn't really select all the polygons for some reason. Unlike blender which has a xray mode allowing you to select through objects I didn't see anything offered within Daz. So all I could do with geometry editor was simply hide the surfaces.
For the clothes and using outside resources. Yeah that's something I considered. Unfortunately I am unable to rig them up to the characters. Perhaps I need to learn actual rigging that is compatible with Daz. Other than that, I don't think they would be consistent enough if I have to have a series of renders instead of just one or two renders. That's another dilemma to consider when making too drastic edits to the assets like those or utilizing outside assets.
EDIT: Btw, oh right I did manage a little crosover with two or three different hairstyles but there was the slight issue of hair strands going in different direction against the style either or through another set of strands barely making it look a bit odd. Now, I have no idea about stuff like that nor that I ever paid much attention to women's hair that thoroughly but, hey, all the pleasant ladies out here on the forum, is that something that could happen? Like if you generally did style (made, by made I didn't mean making 3D assets if it sounded confusing) your hair yourself generally, and in most cases it's a bit quickly depending on time. Or is that something that would seem weird? I could get some screens if anyone desires.
@anjabear @maxxp2 I guess I'll call upon some of the ladies I have had the chance of having an acquaintance.And also, thanks for the suggestions @eelgoo
Can you post a picture of what you are looking for? Because to be honest, your description could mean a lot of different things. Where is suburban? The UK? Europe? Even in America what might be suburban can mean a lot of different things in different parts of the country.
And you have to consider that the people who make content do it to sell things. They are not going to make something they believe will not sell well. Most of the big sellers are some kind of fantasy, elves, fairies, scifi, apocalypse, pirates, ect, and sex. Of course sexy sells. They do anything BUT reality, because frankly most people do not want to render reality.
Most of the content makers are basing their living off of these products, every creator has to decide on how long they can take on a project and weigh that against profit. Maybe they could add a lot more morphs, but that takes time. What if they spend all that time making the perfect hair and it doesn't sell? At least not well enough to warrant all the time spend on it. Rather, they could have cut the time short and shipped that product, and then worked on something else. The vast majority of products get their sales in the first couple weeks, after that, it might be a trickle. So this factors a lot in the quality of what you see. That is not to pass blame, some of them really doing things in a lazy manner. But there are others who are just trying to get to their next paycheck.
That is the issue with the Daz store. It is so focused on selling things that quality has taken a bit of a back seat. If you want better hair and clothing...you may be better off making it yourself.
You're not alone Raex. These things are exactly the things I look for and use for most of my renders. Shirts and jumpers and shoes that aren't high-fashion. Skirts and dresses that aren't futuristic or barbarian or slut-ware. They're out there but few and far between.
IMO strand-based hair, a good concept in itself, have terrible textures and lack usable morphs unless you want to mesh-grab it around after posing. I suppose what is sold reflects what buyers want, or it could be that the lack of normal clothing on sale encourages artists away from contemporary normal-life themes.... chicken and egg.True enough, I don't think that a normal contemporary theme would be that bad or have a bad sale. It's just the mindset of these creators. Imagination is something they are not well versed in even being artists, good or bad, I can't say. But from my own experience/inexperience, I'll say that they are good enough as far as I can say, from my own point of perspective. If I can't do something and others can, of course they are good enough at it to be doing it. Some artists.
There's a lot that can be done and a lot of people would be into contemporary stuff. I think, it just comes to the mindset of making money. One who wants to simply earn and make an earning, for whatever reason might it be they will do just that. It's not that one could not update a set of hair with more morphs, bases etc etc anything at all, and it would be good as new. It will only attract more attention and get more people to buy. But no, why instead not create something new and make people buy a bunch of it, would be more profitable statistically speaking. But no, quantity over quality, profit over satisfaction/appreciation. A lot of things come to mind.
Anyways, aside from the debate over such a thing I'd rather keep this topic short and precise now. Wouldn't want it to convert a nonsensical banter going back and through like the one over daily points here. Hmm I'll show some examples later in a bit. But found something interesting while trying to manage one of the hair sets. It's from OOT, Mega Updo Hair pack.
The surfaces under surface tab and the polygons distributed under those same surfaces seem to be entirely different. https://ibb.co/album/M2JVJg
Just look at those. For the surface Front1 cutout opacity removes everything but when I hide the polygons it doesn't give me the same effect. For some reason the polygons that affect the Front1 surface according to geometry editor is not the same region that is affected from the surfaces tab. You can see that in the first pic. Can someone explain the heck is that about lol. That's purely jackshit crazy.EDIT: Wow, okay. So, apparently after selecting all the polygons on that surface according to geometry editor (you can see the fine hair lines in blue in one of the image) and those are all the polygons for that surface. And hiding that hides the entire freaking portion no wonder I was unable to select it up what the freaking heck. This is beyond even lazy. Btw, according to the surface tab normally, that Side2 layer actually only hides the fine layer that the blue lines show. This is beyond being lazy. I can't even use those tools on that hair lol. I wonder if that would be the case for all the other hairs too
Edit2: Okay, so I tested some of the OOT hairs and all of them gave me that same results. That the surfaces from the surface tabs did not match the polygon selection or, more precisely, the polygon did match but for some reason the idk, hair particles weren't really attached with the polygon selection for some reason. Sloppy work. Only Wild Loop Hair was true to it's selection. Rest were broken. But, hey, I added 3 more images to the album. Sorry, had to make one since otherwise it would be sorta spamming out here. I think I might need to clip the hair between the right hand side bang but other than that, what do you guys think? I think it looks the topmost candidate. Sophie hair was good but alas not for my character. But I'd say that was the prime example for the type of hair I was looking for.
livingpixels wrote: If you are relying on premade assets with default textures/settings it can get rough. This is where really diving into Daz’s features and taking the time to learn how things work can really pay off. Importing free OBJ assets provides a huge boost to variety and getting what you want/need. Learning how to customize surfaces and shaders can help tremendously. Not only will you be able to texture imported OBJs but you can also create new surface zones to further customize any asset in your scene.
This is the key. But most hobbyists don't do it. If users would take the time to learn/understand one or two functions and features a day in Studio, they'd be cooking in less than 6 months. But then, the same could be said for blender, which is a better option in the end.
The surface tab, and specifically Cutout Opacity, is not “polygon” specific but it is showing the affected area of the UV map for the entire object or a defined subset of an object as defined by a mapped material zone. The Cutout Opacity behavior will vary depending upon the specific alpha map applied, the UV map, and the scaling settings. It is not poly/face specific like the Geometry Editor is.
That's not any different from what I understood on my own. It's not that I don't understand what you're saying or what seems to be happening. In the first place, wouldn't the UV maps be divided according to the set of polygons and how they are divided too?
Because, right now what you're saying or telling me, is that that's the remain or part of the UV independent of the polygon set. Since geometry editor works on the polygons and not the UV mesh itself that means I can't do anything to that portion anyhow with the geometry editor or even the mesh grabber. Since, even if I manage to change the geometry I can't do anything about the mesh itself which won't budge. Because, that is what is happening currently. I don't think that's anyhow normal.
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